Mean Woman Blues

out.”
    “You know, I remembered something they said the last time we talked. They said they turned it over to security.”
    “What the hell does that mean?”
    “I don’t know. By then, I was so over it I just…”
    “Terri!”
    “Isaac, don’t yell at me!” He fell back against the sofa he was sitting on. She realized he hadn’t yelled at all.
    “I’m sorry,” she said again.
    “If you don’t want to talk about it, I can understand.”
    “No, I do. I want to see if I can get it straight in my head.” She looked down at the floor and up again, flinging her still-wet hair out of her eyes, surprised by the color of it. She couldn’t believe she’d done a stupid thing like dye it blue to annoy her mother. “Remember when I talked to my friend Ronnie?”
    “Uh-huh,” he said, his voice nervous, as if he expected her to do the yelling.
    “Well, I was doing such a bad job of keeping track, I had all these fines, and Ronnie said I needed a second account to keep everything straight. See, here’s what I didn’t know. Sometimes, when checks come in to banks, like other people’s banks, you follow— ?” He shook his head. “Like, say, my account’s at First Carnivore, and my client’s account is at T. Rex. Well, then, I deposit her check, but my bank holds it for seven days to make sure it’s cleared.”
    “Why would they do that?”
    “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “They just say it’s a policy, but I don’t think it always is. I guess it’s because I never have enough money to cover the check if it bounces.”
    “I don’t see what that has to do with what happened.”
    “Well, I didn’t know they were doing it, and I’d think the checks had cleared, so I’d just write checks of my own, thinking I had money in the bank. But I didn’t. And then the bank would charge me a fine every time I didn’t.”
    “For the overdraft.”
    “Yeah, I guess.” She felt her shoulders go up in a big, defensive shrug. “I don’t know how banks operate. I mean, how could I know? See, they’d take out twenty-two dollars a check, and I wouldn’t know it, then they’d put through the new checks I’d written, and they wouldn’t clear, plus the old ones, and they wouldn’t clear
again
. And I’d get charged again. Only I wouldn’t know.”
    “Terri.” His voice was accusing. “Surely you’ve had checking accounts before.”
    She shrugged again. “I have, but if I bounced a check, I’d pay the fee. It was no big deal. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
    “But what about your records?”
    “Well, I never wrote anything down. I just couldn’t be bothered. And I never saved bank statements either. I’d never had a problem. I’d think,
OK damn,
and I’d pay the fee. I just… never banked with a bank like this. But, anyway, I got all messed up, and my mom bailed me out—” She stopped, noticing her unfortunate choice of words. “I mean, she said she’d lend me five hundred dollars to get me out of trouble, and my friend Ronnie, who works at a bank, said he’d straighten everything out for me. So I went to see him—”
    “You mean at a different bank?”
    “Yeah, and he opened a business account for me. Then I’d just deposit money at whichever bank was convenient and write checks at both accounts. But when my mom gave me the $500 check and I took it to the first bank to straighten the whole mess out, no one would talk to me.”
    “What do you mean no one would talk to you?”
    “They said, ‘You need to talk to someone in security,’ so I asked for security, and the same thing happened. No one would talk to me there either. I deposited the five-hundred-dollar check, and after that, they never sent me any more bills. I thought it was fixed.”
    “Oh, Terri!”
    “I know, I know. Basically, I just ignored it, which I know was bad on my part.”
    Isaac was silent, probably thinking what a dummy she was. Finally, he said, “You’re telling me they never told you they’d filed charges?”
    She shook her head.
    “Terri, that’s not right. You went there in good faith. It’s just wrong. You’ve got to call the D.A. and explain.”
    “Yeah.
Somebody’s
got to understand.”
    He stayed with her that night and held her, making her think everything was going to be all right.
    But she found out the next day that she couldn’t call the D.A. and explain. Tiffie told her so, strongly: “
Whatever you do, don’t call the D.A.! I’ll see if I can get the charges